


When You Need Me, I'll Be There

by shadowsandsouls



Series: Blackberry Cobbler [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Suicide mention, overdose mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-01 01:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8602387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowsandsouls/pseuds/shadowsandsouls
Summary: Dicky breaks his leg qualifying for the World Juniors and tries to make conversation with his quiet roommate in the hospital recovery wing. He doesn't know the young man who has loss etched on his face, but he'll be there if he needs him to be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that Jack in the hospital right after the overdose is when he needed Bitty the most and it breaks my heart that he couldn't have been there. So imagine a scenario where they were in the same hospital, but didn't know each other. It made me feel a little better, okay! It's probably only going to be three chapters or so, but I wanted to go ahead and get what I already had done out.

New York City, New York   
June 2009  
Mount Sinai St. Luke’s Hospital

 

Dicky was beginning to feel the gravity of the situation he was in; hundreds of miles away from home with only Katya acting as his guardian in the middle of a busy hospital. There would be no qualifying for the Junior Worlds team, and this was his last chance. His leg would take at least six weeks to heal after the rods had been inserted, not to mention a surgery to remove them. Then physical therapy, conditioning, relearning his short program—God his heart monitor was screaming. 

He had woken up from surgery no more than an hour ago, but he was already starting to feel his leg again and an itch beneath his cast was starting to do more than irritate him. 

“Katya,” Dicky whispered to his sleeping coach. “Katya, wake up.” Katya shot awake, a flurry of dark hair shaking around her that looked just as stressed as her face.

“I’m wake. What is wrong, Dicky? You have pain?” She ran nimble fingers up and down the hard plaster cast on his leg. 

“My leg itches. The nurse said to tell him when I could feel it again so they could get me more medicine.”

Katya’s already tired face darkened significantly. “You know how I am feeling about that doctor. She just take you right away without letting me try setting leg myself!”

Yes, and Dicky was quite grateful. Katya was adamant that she had seen enough injuries to know that Dicky had just “upset his ankle” and needed to “set it right”. Her brand of medicine was not always what the doctor called for.

“Well if you won’t get the nurse, will you hand me my skate guard so I can try to itch this scratch?” he asked, more than a little frustrated. Dicky was groggy and uncomfortable and wanted his Mama so bad, and Lord, his leg itched something terrible! 

“No, no,” Katya conceded. “I go get him right now. Don’t worry, try to rest.” Katya got up out of her chair by the bedside and left to go find Dicky’s attending nurse. By the time the nurse—Greg—had come back and given Dicky a pleasant pain killer, he felt relaxed enough to do just as Katya asked and got some rest. 

The next time Dicky woke, the sun was barely up and there was a blond boy sitting on the other side of his bed. By the size of him, he looked probably a few years older than Dicky himself, but not much. The boy had his head down, facing an unmoving figure in another bed.

Oh. Dicky had gotten a roommate. He turned his head slowly, still a little fuzzy from the drugs, and saw a deathly pale boy with dark hair asleep on the bed next to him. There was an IV running through his hand, an intubator lodged in his throat, and a softly beeping heart monitor filling the silence where conversation should have been. 

From where he was sitting, Dicky could only see the blond boy’s back, but he couldn’t miss the way he grabbed the other boy’s hand on the bed. He let out a soft noise—somewhere between a cough and a sob—and held fast to the unresponsive hand. Dicky’s heart pulled to see it, but was too tired to do much more than extend his own hand to the end of the bed in sympathy before he fell back asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

There were hushed voices when Dicky stirred to wakefulness sometime in the morning. He was comfortably warm from the pain killers and loose-limbed from sleep; looking to all the world that he was still asleep. 

“We need to get him moved to a rehab facility before the tabloids take this too far. Hospital to rehab is the best way to go, proven time and time again.” The voice was very clinical and decidedly feminine. 

A much angrier woman answered her. “He’s not tabloid fodder or a statistic, he’s my son—”

“He very nearly wasn’t,” the woman interrupted sharply. “Get him into a well-known rehab to prove he’s on top of his addiction, or let the tabloids run wild with misinformation. It’s up to you, but remember that I was brought in for a reason.” 

The door closed with a resounding slam, and Dicky heard what he thought was a fist hitting behind it.

“Merde. Who the fuck does she think she is? He’s not an addict, he just… He just wanted…” It was a man who spoke now, but he could not finish his words. He simply choked.

“Bob,” the angry woman’s voice was so much softer now that Dicky wondered if it was not a new woman. “We do need to think about putting him somewhere better. Even if he we don’t know he was addicted, he tried to—to. Well.” She paused for a moment to sniffle quietly. “He needs help, Bobby. We can’t lose him.”

“Ali,” was all he said. “Okay. Okay, we’ll look at recovery. We’ll do whatever it takes. I promise.”

Bob and Ali—Dicky had no reason to believe these weren’t their names—said hushed goodbyes to who he assumed was his sleeping roommate, and then slipped out the door. 

Dicky stayed quiet, burrowing into his blanket and trying not to feel like he had eavesdropped on an intimate conversation. There wasn’t much he could have done, really. It wasn’t like he could have gotten up and walked out. Dicky would be discharged that afternoon, anyway, and if he were lucky he would not have to interact with the still unconscious boy behind the curtain.

“I know you heard them,” someone rasped.

Well, Dicky was known for talent, not luck.

“No one could have slept through that,” the boy spoke again. His voice sounded so sore that Dicky winced in sympathy. 

“I didn’t mean to hear it all,” Dicky admitted softly. “I just sort of woke up, and I didn’t want to make anything worse, and then someone was yelling, and gosh I’m just—”

“They’re wrong, you know.”

“Pardon?”

“I wasn’t really addicted and I didn’t mean to overdose. I was just tired.” Ah. Sleeping pills?

Dicky turned his head to look at the cream curtain, trying to look through it. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

The boy laughed roughly. “I thought one person should know the truth before the magazines get a hold of it.”

“You famous or somethin’?”

“Not quite,” the boy answered. He was almost rueful.

“I broke my leg figure skating,” Dicky confessed after a quiet moment. “Not for fun or anything. I’m here for the Junior Worlds and I had a real chance to qualify, but I broke my leg landing a quad toe. Crashed into someone else’s Salchow during free skate. I’ll never see Worlds again.” Dicky could hear the bitterness of fresh loss in his voice. He deserved it, he thought. He deserved to feel this pain and this anguish.

“I’m sorry,” whispered the boy.

“Yeah. No magazine’s ever gonna pick it up, so I guess I’m a little luckier than you.” Dicky hoped the boy could tell he was smiling now, but instead he was quiet. “My name’s Dicky.”

The boy hesitated for a second too long before saying, “Laurent.”

“Nice to meet you, Laurent. Sorry about the circumstances.”

This time Laurent did laugh. One short, hoarse bark. “Yeah, me too.” Dicky didn’t think he found it particularly funny.

They were silent for a time after that. Dicky really didn’t know how to offer comfort to someone who had nearly died, and he didn’t necessarily think Laurent wanted the comfort either. Dicky selfishly wanted someone to pat him on the arm and tell him that he would be okay; he would have a chance to be great again; people had been through worse and he would recover quickly and be competing in no time. But Lord, what would his mother say if she knew someone just in the same room was suffering so much worse than Dicky? And here he was whining and complaining to world’s end? 

When Katya came back later that morning with the doctor, Dicky felt much better. He was ready to be out of the hospital and on his way back home to a hug from his mama. 

“Our flight is leaving in three hours so I work on papers for a bit. You rest, Dicky. You rest, and we be home soon.” Katya patted his arm and Dicky didn’t feel the least bit selfish when a tear slipped down his cheek.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the last chapter! It ended up being longer than both of the previous chapters combined, and I'm pretty happy with it. Thank you so much for all your wonderful encouragement, it made this so much easier to write!

Dicky has done it ever since he was a little boy—measuring out ingredients in his head for pies, biscuits, cakes, and tarts. He sorts his world into cups of sifted flour, pats of cold butter, and heaps of sugar until he can make sense of whatever storm is brewing inside his mind. Mama taught him how to do it as soon as he was old enough to knead dough next to her without stuffing it into his curious mouth, and since then it had gotten him through some of the scariest moments of his life. It makes him feel like all the confusion and frustration and anxiety is coming together inside the oven of his body to make something beautiful and worthwhile. 

During regionals, his fear simmered in a pot and made a batch of white chocolate fudge. On his first day of high school, his anxiety surrounding being “Coach Bittle’s limp-wristed son” turned out a perfectly crimped lattice for an apple pie. 

And now, as Dicky sits in his hospital bed an hour before he needs to leave, he makes a blackberry cobbler to the sounds of Laurent crying softly behind the curtain. He wants to do more. He wants to bring this cobbler into the room with them and offer it to Laurent, warm and perfectly between sweet and tart. Maybe with a scoop of ice cream if Laurent were that kind of guy. But Dicky is not Zeus and his blackberry cobbler is not Athena ready to spring from his mind. All he has to offer are half-baked words.

Dicky makes up his mind before he can convince himself otherwise. He calls gently: “Laurent?”

Laurent doesn’t answer. Dicky tries again, but he’s met with the same muffled sniffling. His crumble is burning. 

Dicky’s arm reaches out almost without his permission and rakes open the curtain. The noise is jarring in the room’s near quiet. Laurent visibly jumps, and lifts his eyes from his lap to Dicky.

Half leaning out of the bed with fully-casted leg in an elevated sling, Dicky is sure he makes the picture of comfort. An apologetic smile graces his lips and he hopes he looks at least a little friendly.

Laurent is just as pale as when Dicky had first seen him the night before. His dark hair is shaggy down his neck and forehead. The IV is still in place. But something catches Dicky attention he hadn’t been able to see before: brilliant blue eyes, made even more so by the red rims. 

That’s right. Laurent had been crying. That’s why Dicky opened the curtain.

“Hi,” Dicky whispered. He worked on pulling his leg out of the sling while Laurent tried to pull himself together.

“Hello.” Gruff. His voice still hoarse from the intubation required to save his life. Tears rolled slowly down Laurent’s face as he lowered his hands from where they were clasped tightly to his mouth. Trying to be quiet, Dicky thought sadly.

“What are you doing?” Laurent’s voice wavered slightly with a quivering breath.

“Trying to get out of this harness,” Dicky answered honestly, grunting as he finally removed the last strap from around his ankle. His leg thumped onto the mattress. “Ow.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going to make a blackberry cobbler.” Dicky carefully swung his legs over the edge of the bed hopped one-legged to Laurent’s bedside.

“I-I don’t understand. There’s no…kitchen?” Dicky thumped heavily into the space Laurent had just scooted out of.

Dicky smiled up into those droopy blue eyes, still watery with tears that needed to be shed. “When I get scared and I feel like crying, it helps to count out all the things it takes to make a pie. Well, a cobbler, I suppose. Some people think I’d go through my skating routine in my head, but well, sometimes that’s what scares me and what good would that do!”

Laurent stared down and him and ran a hand under his nose.

“I don’t need you to do that,” he said. “Go back to your bed, man. I want to be alone.” 

“I’m a little scared myself,” Dicky continued like he hadn’t heard Laurent, “so maybe you could just sit there and listen while I tell you? That would help me an awful lot.”

Those dark brows drew together on Laurent’s forehead but he didn’t say anything. He may not have known Dicky for even 24 hours, but a stubborn soul is easy to spot.

“Okay! The first thing you need is to make the dough. You combine one and a half cups of flour and a half teaspoon of salt in a bowl. This is my great-grandmother’s recipe, Laurent, so don’t go telling anyone I told you how to make it.”

Laurent gave a watery smile, and Dicky felt warm right through to his center.

“Where was I? When the flour and salt are mixed, you need to cut in a quarter cup of both vegetable shortening and cold butter. It’s important that it’s cold, Laurent, otherwise the dough gets soupy. The flour will start to look all crumbly and that’s how you know you did a good job. After that you add four tablespoons of ice cold water a little bit at a time while you stir it, and that’ll help the dough shape up nice and solid.”

Dicky continued in this way, gently instructing Laurent as though he were making it right in front of them. He could see Laurent slowly relaxing in front of him. Taking his mind off of whatever made him want to cry and drawing it to the unchanging process of baking.

“And there it is!” Dicky crowed. “A perfectly browned blackberry cobbler that you made all by yourself. And you did such a great job, Laurent. In case someone hasn’t told you that, you did a great job today.” 

Dicky’s smile consumed his whole face, threatening to split it open. It really was a perfect blackberry crumble in his mind’s eye.

And then, as suddenly as they had stopped a few minutes earlier, twin tears squeezed their way out of Laurent’s closed eyes. Dicky made a soft noise and inched up the bed, resting a hand on Laurent’s shoulder. He shuddered with the force of a breath.

Laurent tried to speak, but he couldn’t seem to get more than a shaky whisper out of his throat. “I’m sorry,” he cried.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Dicky whispered back. From this vantage, he could brush his fingertips through the long hair at Laurent’s neck. So he did. Tentatively at first, and then firmer when Laurent’s head dropped and he forced out a sob. 

“Shh,” Dicky crooned. “What happened? You can tell me.”

Laurent shook his head, but Dicky pressed on. “You can. I’m leaving in less than an hour and you’ll never see me again. You can tell me anything you want, and I’ll never tell a soul, honest. I know it’s sometimes easier to talk to a complete stranger than someone you’ve known your whole life. It’s okay.” 

Sad, blue eyes turned to meet him and they overflowed with tears. Laurent was silent for a moment longer as Dicky continued rubbing his hands across his scalp. “I messed up… I messed up and I can’t—can’t ever go back. Or fix it. Or apologize enough. Nothing will make it better—nothing—and I just want to go back. I just—,” Laurent cut off with another wrecked sob that Dicky felt in his own chest.

Dicky pulled that messy thatch of black hair down onto his shoulder and did what maybe no one else had ever let Laurent do before: cry.

“For what it’s worth, I think maybe you don’t need to go back and fix anything. I think you can make the whole world new for yourself,” Dicky told him after a while.

Laurent raised his head suddenly. “Holy shit, man. Aren’t you like twelve?”

“Excuse you, I am fourteen!” Dicky laughed and gently swatted the back of Laurent’s neck.

“That was sage advice for a fourteen-year-old,” he grinned, eyes finally swimming with something other than loss.

“And that was a cleansing cry for a however-old-you-are,” Dicky chirped right back.

Laurent flushed. “Yeah. I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry. It probably felt good to get some of that out. My daddy was always scared I’d grow up to be a cry baby, but I can’t help thinking a good cry is important every now and again. Lord knows I still tear up at the national anthem on the medal stand and I’ve done it a dozen times!” Dicky laughed and relished the way Laurent’s small smile came back.

“Thanks, Dicky. Really…thank you.”

“Of course. What are roommates for?”

———————————————————

“Okay, all our bags are in the cab and we still have time for Starbucks at the airport. Are you ready to go home, Dicky?” Katya had already helped him down into the wheelchair that would escort him from the hospital and was standing behind him at the ready. 

“Yeah, I am.” Dicky smiled at the thought of home, but first… “Bye, Laurent.”

“Bye, Dicky,” he waved. “I, uh, I hope your leg gets better soon. And I’m sorry we met like this. I think we could have been friends, but I have to go to, well, you know.” Laurent looked down at his hands.

“I know,” Dicky smiled softly. “Maybe if I’m in New York again I’ll look for you.”

“Yeah. I’d love to see you skate.”

Dicky and Laurent looked at each other for just a moment longer, savoring the calm in each other’s eyes—Laurent’s hooded and icy and full of regret. 

“I’ll make a blackberry cobbler for you, okay?”

“I’d like that,” Laurent laughed. 

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Good luck.”

“You too.”

And then Katya wheeled Dicky out of the room and away from the shortest-lived friendship he’d ever had. And the saddest boy he had ever hugged.

“Who was that, Dicky?” Katya asked over his shoulder.

“Someone who’s gonna make us real proud one day, Kat. I know that much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The recipe Dicky uses for the blackberry cobbler can be found here: http://addapinch.com/blackberry-cobbler-recipe/


End file.
